Fatal Fury Special

The Good
Controls, sounds, music, graphics, control, colors . . . what the hell? How did Takara and SNK pull all of this off with Master System hardware? This game is the most amazing 8-bit fighting game for an 8-bit system, and it's so good, you'd do a double-take and think you're playing the Neo-Geo original at the arcade!

The Bad
Nothing negative at all.

The Bottom Line
Got a Game Gear? Buy this game, it's a Game Gear masterpiece, and it shows with effort and excellent programming, 24-bit goodness can be done a totally inferior hardware (makes you wonder about present games being so sloppy).

The Good
I'll try and keep this short and sweet.

Fatal Fury Special, the "special" version of Fatal Fury 2 as many put it, improved quite a bit over its predecessors. For one, fan favorite fighters Duck King and Tung Fu Rue are back, in all their wacky (and old! ^_^) glory. Old man Tung's learned some new tricks, and even better: the four bosses of Fatal Fury 2 are fully playable, as well as the Big Man himself, Geese Howard, making another wicked appearance! worships Geese...worship him, I say!!! ^_^

Although no one has generally changed from FF2, a few of their stages have gotten minor, almost subtle face lifts, and the new music for Duck King and Tung Fu Rue sounds excellent. And yes, Geese's theme is back and remixed for more evilness! And don't forget the REAL final boss of Fatal Fury 2 and Special: Wolfgang Krauser, with his WICKED stage (a massive German palace), and unbelievable music...did I mention the orchestra in his stage that PLAYS the theme?? No? Okay, I just did now. ^_^

The Bad
Nothing, but what I'm talking about here is the Sega CD version, and...well, here's where it gets ugly.

First, and foremost, SNK didn't port this game directly to the Sega CD. Instead, European development house Funcom ported this (as well as Samurai Shodown) to the system, and it didn't turn out pretty. I'll list as much as I can wrong about this port:

• Missing character animations. What's missing the most is the characters' fight poses (like when they start a match). Plus what's there looks incredibly choppy.

• On the subject of missing animations: the backgrounds are ALL missing LOTS of animations, and Geese Raging Stormed someone for screwing his stage up horribly (especially cutting out the intro for the stage: going through the screen doors one at a time.) Oh, and Krauser found the guy who removed the orchestra from his stage and...well...it wasn't a nice sight...

• Nearly EVERY SINGLE vocal sample is missing. What's left is some of the characters' grunts and yells when they get hit or use moves, and what is there must've been downsampled to the point where the PC speaker of my old 286 sounded better than this! And for Chrissake, even the ANNOUNCER voices are MIA!!

• The difficulty levels might as well not exist. There are NO differences whether you're playing Easy mode or Expert Mode. Everyone fights the same in EVERY difficulty.

• Some music is missing; it's most noticeable on the (mute) victory screens. Surprisingly, everyone's themes are all there. The music gets at least two points, though: it's recorded directly on the CD, and it was sampled straight from the original Neo Geo game.

• Funcom even screwed the guest star!! Ryo looks WORSE than he did in Art of Fighting 1 for the damn GENESIS!!! The. GEN. ES. IS!!

• Fatal Fury 2 on the Genesis looked AND felt more intact, and that's on a freakin' cartridge!! This is a CD-based system with more RAM, stronger video capability, and additional CPU power! I'm appalled!!
  
  The Bottom Line
  I find it utterly embarrassing that a system that could EASILY handle a Neo Geo port with only minor differences (like slight color loss) gets this HORRIBLE port of such an excellent fighting game.

And I find it funny (yet sad) that Eternal Champions (a Sega CD fighter that came out later) showed what you could do with the system when it comes to fighters. Too bad it wasn't around to help Funcom save Fatal Fury Special...

Bottom line: I'm glad SNK handles their own porting now, except when it comes to PS1 ports...-_-

The Good
Overall graphics, sound, control, extras, the music (especially the music), and the package design (especially the CD print, which has all of the fighter standing in a circle looking up at you).

The Bad
Control could've been tighter, background gimmicks totally missing except for Blood's stage, and the resolution could've used a good once over with the Konami 101-color dither technique (used in Snatcher), and some of the perspective is awkward. Also, Ryo is selectable right off the bat, which leaves no mystery to find him.

The Bottom Line
It shows how the Sega CD was going to be the killer system at one time, but a 1994 release and a hurried feeling overall . . . well, maybe many gamers may not notice till it's pointed out. However, bottomline, it is good.